Cable movies blend fiction and reality

Saturday

Nov 3, 2012 at 12:01 AM

In a case of made-for-TV casting magic, a network star plays a cable star in an adaptation of a book based on the cable star's own life story. Did I mention that the cable star also produced the movie? If it were up to me, it would be Brad Garrett in "The Bill O'Reilly Story," but we'll have to settle for Jennie Garth ("Beverly Hills, 90210") playing cable's legal scourge Nancy Grace as a young assistant district attorney in "The Eleventh Victim" (8 tonight on Lifetime).

In a case of made-for-TV casting magic, a network star plays a cable star in an adaptation of a book based on the cable star's own life story. Did I mention that the cable star also produced the movie? If it were up to me, it would be Brad Garrett in "The Bill O'Reilly Story," but we'll have to settle for Jennie Garth ("Beverly Hills, 90210") playing cable's legal scourge Nancy Grace as a young assistant district attorney in "The Eleventh Victim" (8 tonight on Lifetime).

Loosely based on Grace's own life and career, "Victim" follows Hailey Dean (Garth), a fictional stand-in for the television personality. While prosecuting a notorious serial killer, the defendant physically assaults her in court. After that trauma, Dean relocates to New York to restart life as a therapist, only to find her patients dying one-by-one — in a manner similar to the method of the creep she helped put behind bars. Colin Cunningham and Los Angeles Lakers star Metta World Peace co-star.

— Comic Larry Wilmore ("The Daily Show") heads to Florida to examine the swing state's exotic, religious and economic conditions the weekend before that state's crucial role in the 2012 presidential election. "Larry Wilmore's Race, Religion and Sex in Florida" (10 tonight on Showtime) includes comedians Paul Rodriguez and Moshe Kasher, Republican strategist Ron Christie and Current TV's Ana Kasparian in a town hall discussion of Florida's very peculiar blend of cultures.

— A theatrical thriller based on real events, "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden" (8 p.m. Sunday on National Geographic) re-creates the CIA's efforts to track Osama bin Laden, culminating with the secret raid on his Pakistani compound that resulted in his death.

This marks the first scripted movie of its kind to air on National Geographic Channel. "Team Six" will be available from Netflix after its exclusive cable premiere.

Some have argued, without seeing the film, that "Team Six" represents a propaganda boost for the president the weekend before Tuesday's election. The filmmakers have denied this. It should be noted that the National Geographic Channel is owned primarily by Fox Networks, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the owner of Fox News, which is hardly friendly territory for the current occupant of the White House.

— "Curiosity" (9 Sunday on Discovery), the series that crashed a plane into the Mexican desert a few weeks back, presents an epic life and death battle on an unimaginable scale in "Battlefield Cell." This conflict takes place within the human body, in microscopic detail, as "Cell" uses CGI technology to show us a human skin cell as it is attacked by a hostile virus, and how that cell reacts, retreats, mounts a defense and triumphs over a virus set upon attacking not only the individual cell, but an entire human body.

Once thought to be fairly simple organisms, cells have been found to be more intricately complicated than a large city, capable of actions that seem straight out of science fiction. Timely viewing as we advance into cold and flu season.

British and American diplomats, journalists and military figures scramble for dominance in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq in the scalding 2009 British satire "In the Loop" (8 p.m. Saturday, Sundance).